1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to changing an application User Interface (UI), and in particular, to an apparatus and method for changing an application UI in a portable terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional portable terminals have no choice but to simply use menus provided by terminal manufacturers, and thus cannot satisfy the demands of users desiring to use individually customized menus. To solve this problem, there have been methods for allowing users to change backgrounds and icons into desired ones for change of portable terminal menu UIs.
The UI themes of portable terminals are broadly classified into two types: a menu UI and a program UI.
A menu UI includes a main menu and a menu tree as well as an idle screen displayed when a portable terminal is powered on. In general, a program UI is called an application UI.
It is easy to change a menu UI. However, changing an application UI necessitates changing an application architecture and using a suitable program code and a markup language such as an eXtensible Markup Language (XML).
The menu interface has a menu relationship script describing the relationship between a menu theme file and a menu screen and thus makes it possible to change names, icons and backgrounds of menus. However, the application UI is relatively difficult to change, and cannot maintain the total consistency between menus, if changed.